Because I am still pondering some of the Kidlit Con panels, I am going to report on the day backwards. Coming Together, Giving Back: Building Community, Literacy, and the Reading message was the final panel on Saturday, October 17th. The four leading the discussion were Jen from Jen Robinson’s Book Page, Gina from PBS Booklights, Ernestine from Reading is Fundamental, and Terry from The Reading Tub. The main idea behind this was how can we, as book bloggers, can come together and reach outside of our community. It’s all well and good to talk to each other, but when we spend so much time building our knowledge, we need to think of ways to get outside of our community. Literacy is such an important issue to all of us, so collaboration can allow us to accomplish much more than we can as individuals. Examples of projects that have worked so far are the Cybils, Guys Lit Wire, Reader Girlz, and Share a Story – Shape a Future.

One idea is to collaborate with other bloggers. There are lots of book bloggers who don’t focus on kid lit, maybe you can guest post there and invite them to guest post on your blog. And then there are all the bloggers who focus on other things. My friend Jen at The Next Kid Thing suggested, when I mentioned this, that I could guest at her site, and I’d love to have her guest here.

Laurel Snyder proposed an idea where people all over the country gather together on the same day, in malls, to read together with children. There are 25 millions kids in the US who still don’t have access to books outside of school. That is a huge number, and the idea of bringing focus to the importance of sharing books with kids is awesome, especially the idea of having it in a mall where it might reach those who are less aware of the situation. I really hope Laurel runs with the idea and that we all do what we can to support this!